John --

I wanted to give you a quick update on what I’m up to during the “off season.” The legislature is only a part-time job, right?

Not the way that I approach the job, anyway!

Even though I announced last month that I will not be running for a fourth term in the state senate next year, I am still hard at work both in the district and at the capitol.

With about three months to go until session starts, we are starting to go over ideas for bills to introduce in January. We are also starting to meet with stakeholders and other interested parties about some of the issues that we think will dominate the next legislative session.

Last week I visited EMD Electronics (formerly Versum) in south Tempe, a German-based company that employs about 180 workers in the ASU Research Park. I also joined them for the Arizona Manufacturers Council annual awards luncheon, where they were recognized as one of the companies of the year for Arizona.

And late last month I also joined several of my colleagues and the governor for the groundbreaking of Intel’s $20 billion expansion in Chandler. We worked hard on a bill earlier this year that led to Intel’s announcement, and it was great to see many of my colleagues and other Arizona leaders at the groundbreaking. This project will create thousands of construction jobs and thousands of permanent, high paying jobs in our community.

One of the favorite parts of my job is visiting all the K-12 schools in our community, something that we have traditionally done in the fall of odd-numbered years (previous tours were in 2017 and 2019). We are getting set to start our latest round of tours this week, and I couldn’t be more excited.

We are taking the proper COVID-19 precautions with each visit, with our first stop tomorrow at AAEC charter school in Mesa. We have 55 schools to visit over the next two months, and it will keep me busy!

On these visits, I sit down with the principal, staff, and teachers, and hear more about the critically important work they are doing and asking how I can be helpful at the state capitol. I also usually talk to students and get to visit classrooms across multiple grade levels.

On these visits, I make it a priority to sit down and visit with school counselors and social workers to hear more about how our kids are doing. I started doing this on our last round of visits in 2019 and it further educated me on the importance of student mental health and informed my thought process when introducing bills at the capitol related to mental health support.

Speaking of schools, if you live in the Kyrene or Chandler Unified school district boundaries, you should have received your early ballot in the mail very recently (or should receive it any day now). Kyrene has an override continuation on their ballot, and Chandler Unified has bond and override continuations. Voting YES on each is critically important to help continue supporting our local public schools. These elections are mail-in only, so please make sure you return your ballots soon and vote YES!

Finally, I wanted to share with you a fun event I will be participating in next week with one of my Senate colleagues. As part of Humanities Week at ASU, we will be participating in a discussion about bipartisanship, the role of virtue in politics, and how politics has changed over the centuries.

Both Senator Boyer and I are history buffs, so what started off as an idea for a Hamilton vs. Jefferson style debate evolved into a broader discussion of history, politics, and partisanship in an increasingly hostile political atmosphere.

The event is next Wednesday night, October 20^th, at 6pm. You can attend either in-person or over Zoom! More details on how you can RSVP can be found here.

I hope you enjoyed this update! I will have more to share as we get closer to session in January and will of course continue my weekly updates once we are underway.

As always, thank you for your support!

Take care,

Sean

http://www.seanbowieforaz.com/

Paid for by Sean Bowie for State Senate. Authorized by Sean Bowie.